As per usual, it’s amazing how much effort it takes to get out of our house and on the road. Friday night is a stew of small business bloopers, last minute packing and shipping until the printer breaks down and elusive down jackets that refuse to be found but we finally make it out the door and half way to our destination by midnight. I don’t mind driving long distances when I have my entire family in the car with me, though Farley does get annoying when he repeatedly asks:
HOW MUCH FURTHER?
We are, of course, headed for Arches National Park just outside of Moab, Utah in what I believe to be one of the prettiest parts of Red Rock Country in the American Southwest. The land and sky there bleed color and texture and I’m always fit to be tied with inspiration for the duration of my stay.
This is high desert.
Cold in the winter with occasional accumulations of snow.
Hot and thirsty in the summertime.
The sticky velvet of the sandstone absorbs the heat and color of the sun and as far as the eye can see it’s an oasis of vermillion studded with towering stone formations carved by sun, rain and wind; staunch sentries of high desert wilderness spelt out in smooth curves against azure sky.
Every time we visit I get a little high on color, texture and vitamin D.
RW puts up with a lot of tireless, wild gallivanting and questioning from me. He’s a saint to put up with my antics but this is one particular place where I feel imbibed with energy. Perhaps it’s the direct sunlight. But I think it’s the spirit of the place filling me up, winding me up and setting me free. I stretch my wings. I glide and glint in the sun. I’m intensely greedy for warm updrafts.
It all begins when I roll the windows down in the car and let the red dust of the the Southwest mingle with my skin and trap itself in my hair. Never mind making a place a destination, to fully experience Red Rock Country, you’ve got to become one with it. That means turning a bit red with the grit of the place and attempting to immerse oneself in the depth of the wildness of the world instead of simply treading softly through it. I take myself off the trails and bend low to study mouse tracks in the fine red silt. I hide behind the creosote on my hands and knees and stare into the cold eyes of small lizards. I lay on my back and let my worries erode; the wind shapes me into a smooth pillar and carves away at the callouses on my heart and soul. I’m pink and freshly scrubbed, younger than ever and the ravens leave their footprints at the corners of my eyes.
We drive the car fast around stone structures and crimson monoliths until we arrive at the ultimate destination.
We clap for the bride and groom we came to support. I think about how amazing it must feel to have been married in such a pristine place, beneath a wide arch of stone, with a winter breeze coldly whispering over faces and hands. I think about how this place could be considered the root of their journey together as a couple. They’ll weather time and all that comes with it (wind, ice, rain, sun) and still they’ll stand firm and develop more character as the years pass, etched in place by love and the elements…
…just like the window in the rock.
Red Rock Country acts as a portal for my imagination.
I come away with more luggage than I brought; my small bag containing spare socks, toothbrushes and a book becomes duffel bags full of wonder, creativity, ideas, concepts, dreams…because the view from here is endless and even when the sky gives terra firma a thin lipped kiss I know the world is stretching beyond what I can see and the red rock will fall away into low desert flats and then it will roll up into foothills and then down to the ocean and then across seas, plains, cliffs, ice, tundra, forests, lakes, hills and so on until my gaze is centered on my own back having come full circle on a straight vector of flight around our world.
OH TO SEE THAT FAR.
Horizons piled up on horizons.
Opportunities pressed into dreams.
Realities lifted up in flight.
Red stone warmed with potential.
Dreams realized and hopes cast out once more into the wind that wends
through infinite skies.
Things don’t end.
Possibility knows no end.
And sometimes it takes a trip to Red Rock Country to remember.
Until I return, I press my palms against
the art of the earth, the art left behind and the warmth of the stone.
I carry it with me.
I carry it lightly.
Red stone. Cinnabar heart. Vermillion dreams.